Do you remember the feeling of anticipation when you were waiting at the threshold of a new experience? Something brought you to the point of a new beginning. In your preparation and anticipation, you wondered what might be ahead. Maybe you were at the trailhead of an unfamiliar recreation area with numerous hiking paths to choose from, or at the entrance to a vacation resort you had never visited before. Maybe it was the entrance to an outlet mall, the doorstep of a new school, or the threshold of a university campus. The experience had multiple components that were all connected by a common theme. Maybe you had talked with someone who had already been there, maybe you had read a review. You were excited but still not entirely sure what awaited you.
(11 mins. reading time)
The Psalm 1½ post brought us to the entrance of the literary sanctuary of the book of Psalms or the Psalter. Now we are ready to walk past the Psalm 1 and 2 pillars of Torah wisdom and Messiah King. What can we expect to find inside?
Join the Tour
I remember the first time I toured the University of Waterloo campus where I was to eventually spend the better part of the next five years of my life. I had researched schools, submitted my application, written the entrance tests, received the acceptance and paid my tuition fees. Walking up the concrete stairs through the main entrance, I was welcomed by the campus bookstore on the right and the tuck shop on the left. Once through the corridor, I encountered Engineering 1, the first of several engineering buildings. After a little more walking I noticed it was connected to Engineering 2, which in turn was connected to Engineering 3 followed by Engineering 4. Underground, there were more lecture halls and classrooms that connected all four buildings.
What a maze of buildings and rooms I would learn to navigate in my campus career. This was not at all like high school where all the classrooms were in a single building. It was obvious from the different architectural styles that the buildings were constructed over a period of time. As the school grew from a fledgling university with a single engineering building to a well-established institution, the enrollment increased, new programs were added, and more space was needed.
I look at the development of the school’s engineering program marked by the addition of new buildings in a similar way as the compiling of the Psalter. Both were intentionally put together over a period – 500 years for the Psalter and thirteen years for the four buildings. Each book or building was constructed in succession because there were changes after the previous one was completed that required a fresh response. The new buildings utilized the experience and lessons learned from the previous ones. And like the underground lecture hall that connected all the buildings together, there are nodes or themes in the Psalter that connect all the books together to form a continuous story.
The following question and response from Frederick Beuchner’s story, Brendan, inspired me to look at the five books of the Psalter as a series of connected buildings,
“Where might you find a house with fifty and a hundred windows and all of them looking out onto heaven? King David’s book of psalms.”1
Five books or buildings and 150 windows or chapters. The Psalter is not a random collection of poems, songs and prayers, but rather an intentional compilation describing both the life of King David and his descendants and the Israelite nation. Like Bilbo Baggins’ memoir, There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale, the Psalter follows the nation’s journey from the reign of King David to the brokenness of the Babylonian exile, the return to independence and waiting for the conquest of the future Davidic King. I am indebted to the following three tour guides who have led me along this building-by-building tour of the Psalms: Bible Project2, T.M. Suffield3 and Bruce Waltke.4
Intentional by Design- How can we tell?
When reading the Book of Psalms you will notice there are five places where translators have added the headings, Book I, II, III, IV and V. The translators were as creative in naming the books as the university was in naming their buildings. The book divisions appear random, partly because the books have very different lengths. How were these divisions determined? When you look at the end of each book, there is a poem with a very similar ending that reads something like, “May the LORD, the God of Israel, be blessed forever and ever, amen and amen.” This appears to be an editorial addition marking the conclusion of each individual book.5 We can find clues about the content of the individual books by considering the bookends – the first and last poem in each book.
Book I – Struggle of the King
Psalm 41, the last psalm in Book I, was written by David, as well as Psalms 3 to 40. Book I is the book of David which focused on his journey to becoming king and corresponded with David’s story in 1 Samuel. Book I is dominated by laments. If we take Psalms 3 and 41 as the bookends, we can see that despite David’s suffering while waiting to be king – in Psalm 3 which portrays the rebellion of his own son, and in Psalm 41 which describes the treachery of the nobility – the laments did not lead to despair but instead show that no one can overthrow God’s anointed.6
The centre of Book I has a collection of poems (Ps. 15-24) that open and close with a call to covenant faithfulness. The opening poem is followed by David as the model of this covenant faithfulness (Ps. 16-18). David called out to God to deliver him, and God raised David up as king. In the following poems (Ps. 20-23) David’s life foreshadowed the future Messianic King who will also call out to God for deliverance and will then become king over all the nations. At the centre of this collection is Psalm 19, a poem dedicated to praising God for the Torah. The twin themes of Psalms 1 and 2, Torah and Messiah, are very apparent in Book I.7
Book I showed the struggle of the king to establish the kingdom, and that God did not turn away from his anointed and the promises made to David. It seems reasonable that David brought these poems together as the first collection which would be dated prior to his death in 970 B.C.
Book II – The Reigning King
Book II continued David’s story, who was now the victorious and reigning king and ended on a high note with Psalm 72 written by Solomon. In Psalm 72 the covenant promises made to David were passed on to Solomon. The description of the Davidic and Solomonic king in Psalm 72 was everything that the previous psalms had been building up to. This is the climax point of the previous seventy-one poems and songs and the climax of the Israelite nation. They are at peace with their neighbours. They have a wise king. In Book II there was a widening of the kingdom which ended with Solomon welcoming and including his enemies in the kingdom. He was the king who did not fight a battle, yet his kingdom grew.8
The Book II bookends, Psalms 42 and 72, both spoke about a hope for a future return to the temple in Zion and the future reign of the Messianic King. The poems echoed passages from the prophets explaining that the king’s reign will fulfill God’s promise to Abraham to bring God’s blessings to all nations.9
King Solomon, who died in 930 B.C., is considered to be the complier of Book II since over half of the chapters were written by his father, and Solomon himself wrote Psalm 72.
Book III – The Pendulum Swings
Book III was completed and collected by the sons of Korah who, at the time of King David, were the great leaders in choral and orchestral music in the tabernacle. Soon after 586 BC, Book III was combined with Books I-II to form Israel’s Psalter of the exile. From the high note at the end of Book II (Ps. 72), Book III began with a starkly different tone. Psalm 73 promised that justice would one day come to the wicked who seem to prosper. At the other end of Book III (Ps. 89) there was anxiety over the unfulfillment of everything that God had previously promised. This was, however, accompanied by a choice to trust God who seemed to have forgotten his promises.
Bruce Waltke called Book III the “dark book.” Something terrible had happened to the nation of Israel – the king was cast down and the nation was in exile. Where was the fulfillment of God’s promises? The covenant was in the distant past. God’s people were discouraged as they sat in exile looking back to a kingdom unfulfilled, a failed and empty covenant.10
Book III contained the highest concentration of laments from all five books. In the middle of Book III, the fall of the northern kingdom was in view, and by the end of the book the southern kingdom had fallen. Israel was questioning her place in God’s plan, and in exile was even questioning God’s faithfulness. In Book III, each pair of poems between Psalm 74 and 83 alternated between lament and hope.11 These ten poems were tension-filled pairs highlighting the nations struggle of looking at their current state of despair compared with the past fulfillment of God’s promises.
Book III concluded with Psalm 89 reflecting on God’s promise to David from the perspective of Israel’s exile. The poet remembered how God said that he would never abandon the line of David but now they were looking at Israel’s rebellion, destruction, exile, and the downfall of David’s line. The Psalm 2 Messiah was in the distant past and the covenant was fractured. The Israelites were discouraged and wondering whether God would fulfill his promises. Book III ended by asking God to never forget his promise to David.12
The Book III prayers were for the “in-between” times. Prayers with the rawest emotions and unanswered questions. Book III was a book of the tension-filled pair of despair and hope, but the pendulum kept swinging back to despair. We live now in the “in-between” of Book III. In between the first and second coming of Jesus. In between the Garden of Gethsemane and the new Eden that awaits us.
Laments and Praises
The many different poems in the book of Psalms basically fall into two main categories – poems of lament and poems of praise. The lament poems express pain, confusion and anger about how horrible things are for the poet, what’s wrong with the world and then ask if God is going to do something about it. Praise poems are poems of joy and celebration. They point out what’s good in the world by retelling stories of what God has done in our lives and thanking him for it. Books I, II and III are heavily loaded with laments and sparsely sprinkled with praises. This is important because it tells us that lament is an appropriate response to the evil that we see in the world.13
From David’s struggle to becoming king in Book I, to reaching the pinnacle of Solomon’s glory in Book II, then falling to the depths of despair in exile in Book III, the Israelite nation had been on quite a ride over the 500-year period.
If the tour ended after Book III, it would by a tragic ending to the story. But it doesn’t end there. As the Israelite nation lived in exile and prayed the prayers of Books I, II and III, what awaited them next? Where will they turn for their future hope and deliverance? How will they respond in their dire situation, and how will God answer them?
Head and Heart Collide 
2 thoughts on “Anticipation”